Press freedom groups ask UNESCO to reject Obiang money

We, the undersigned freedom of expression organizations,
join with the Committee to Protect Journalists to express our grave concern
regarding the $3 million donation by Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro
Obiang for the administration of an international prize in life sciences. As a
leading institution that advocates “empowering people through the free flow of
ideas and by access to information and knowledge,” UNESCO should not accept
funds from one of Africa’s worst violators of
press freedom.

Under Obiang, the local press is almost totally controlled
by the state. The few brave local journalists working for international media outlets
have been targeted by Obiang’s regime. Samuel Obiang Mbana, a correspondent for
Agence France-Presse(AFP) was
detained for hours by police last month at Malabo airport, where he had gone to cover
the arrival of heads of state for a regional economic conference, local
journalists told CPJ. Mbana’s predecessor, former AFP reporter Rodrigo Angue
Nguema, was imprisoned for four months on Malabo’s
BlackBeach prison last year in a defamation
case. Nguema was the sole foreign correspondent in Malabo, according to local reports.

If state media journalists in Equatorial Guinea demonstrate even
a modicum of objectivity they are silenced by authorities. In January, Deputy Information
Minister Purita Opo Barila dismissed four journalists from the state radio and
TV broadcaster, RTVGE, for “insubordination” and “lack of enthusiasm—journalists
told CPJ that the real reason may have been that the reporters did not cover
the government’s “merits” enough. In February, authorities detained RTVGE
journalist Pedro Luis Esono for three days in the coastal city of Bata with no charges
brought after Esono did an unwelcome live broadcast on the discovery of seven
bodies at the city’s dumps.

In November 2009, President Obiang won “95.4 percent of the
votes” thanks in part by the state radio and television’s biased coverage.
According to local reports, opposition candidates were barely mentioned and
RTVGE openly campaigned for Obiang. Journalists have no outlet to complain
about this since no union or private press organization exists in the country.
Media regulation is conducted by the information ministry, whose staff all belong
to the ruling party.

With Obiang’s iron
grip on the media, the world will never learn how much Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth is
siphoned off by the ruling elite. While the country’s oil wealth has placed its
GDP on par with Italy and Spain, the bulk
of the population lives below the poverty line, the International Monetary Fund
has reported.

At a World Press
Freedom Day ceremony this year in Brisbane,
Australia, you
pointed out that people are hampered in their everyday affairs if they do not
have access to information. Further, in your keynote speech, you denounced the
fact that “countless journalists all over the world continue to endure
harassment, intimidation, or physical assault in the course of defending our
right to know.”

If UNESCO administers
this prize, your words on World Press Freedom Day will ring hollow. Not only
that, but the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which
honors “a person, organization or institution that has made a notable
contribution to the defense and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the
world, especially if this involved risk,” will be undermined if were bestowed
by an organization that accepted money from a regime that oppresses the media.

You have noted that
the Obiang prize was approved by UNESCO’s executive board and as
director-general you are bound to their decisions. However, we believe that that
implementation of this prize will do grave damage to UNESCO’s credibility as an
organization that promotes freedom of expression. It will also do serious harm to
your reputation as someone who has demonstrated a strong commitment to the
principles of freedom of expression. We urge you to make this case directly the
members of the executive board that it must reverse this decision; we commit to
doing the same.